Elizabeth the Queen: The Life of a Modern Monarch

by Sally Bedell Smith

  Much of the visit was given over to the usual receptions, formal dinners at the White House and British embassy (complete with gold plates flown over from Buckingham Palace), and tours of local sights, several of which offered unguarded glimpses of the Queen, described in news accounts as “the little British sovereign” or “the little monarch.”

  It was evident to Ruth Buchanan that the Queen was “very certain, and very comfortable in her role. But she didn’t let the barrier down. She would maintain a stance, and she was very much in control of what she did, although she did laugh at my husband’s jokes.” Once when Buchanan was waiting for her husband to escort the royal couple to their limousine, “I could hear her guffawing. You didn’t realize she had that hearty laugh. But the minute she rounded the corner and saw us, she just straightened up.”

  British ambassador Harold Caccia threw a garden party for two thousand under five tents lined with fiberglass that shimmered like silk, preceded by a more exclusive meeting with eighty diplomats and their wives. During a tour of the National Gallery, the Queen confessed to its director, John Walker, that she had recently longed to buy a Monet at a London auction, but couldn’t afford the “staggering amount.”

  Vice President Richard Nixon treated the royal couple to a luncheon with ninety-six guests in the orchid-bedecked old Supreme Court chamber in the Capitol. It was their first encounter with the incisive but socially awkward vice president. Perhaps taking note of the recent criticism of the Queen, Nixon talked to her about speaking techniques. The next day he even sent her a book with some “rather startling ideas” that he thought could be helpful: The Art of Readable Writing, by noted language expert Dr. Rudolf Flesch, an advocate of “plain talk.”

  On the third day the Queen indulged in some unusual departures from the normal run of activities. She had specifically asked to see an American football “match,” as she put it, so the White House arranged for her to sit in a “royal box” at the fifty yard line at the University of Maryland’s Byrd Stadium for a game against the University of North Carolina. On the way she spotted a Giant supermarket and asked if a visit might be arranged so she “could see how American housewives shop for food.”

  To the cheers of 43,000 spectators, the Queen walked onto the field to chat with two opposing players, both strapping lads in crew cuts. Dressed in a $15,000 mink coat given to her by Mutation Mink Breeders Association, a group of American fur farmers, she watched the game intently but seemed “perturbed” whenever the players threw blocks. It was a quintessential American display: cheerleaders doing cartwheels, high-stepping drum majorettes, marching bands, and North Carolina girls costumed in large cigarette packs covering their heads and torsos, dancing as an announcer boasted about their state’s “parade of industries.”

  While the royal pair was being entertained at halftime, security men raced back to the supermarket to arrange for a visit on the fly. After Maryland’s 21–7 victory, the motorcade arrived at the Queenstown Shopping Center at 5 P.M., to the amazement of hundreds of shoppers. Elizabeth II and Philip had never before seen a supermarket, a phenomenon then unknown in Britain, and their visit was noteworthy for its spontaneity and novelty.

  With the curiosity of anthropologists and an informality they had not displayed publicly in Britain, they spent fifteen minutes shaking hands, quizzing customers, and inspecting the contents of shopping carts. “How nice that you can bring your children along,” said Elizabeth II, nodding toward the little seat in one housewife’s cart. Queen and consort were amazed not only at the quantities of food but the range of products—clothing, stationery, toiletries, even Halloween costumes. She took a particular interest in frozen chicken pot pies, while he nibbled on sample crackers with cheese and joked, “Good for mice!” They both heard about refrigeration techniques and were particularly intrigued by the checkout counters, which cashier David Ferris explained as the monarch walked through the lane. “Thank you for the tour,” the Queen said to supermarket manager Donald D’Avanzo. “I enjoyed it very much.” D’Avanzo announced afterward that he had been “amazed and scared.… It was the greatest thing that ever happened to me.”

  On their final day in Washington, the Queen and Philip made their only private visit of the entire tour, a sunny drive out to Virginia so she could inspect eighteen yearlings at the Middleburg Training Track. She spent nearly an hour looking at the horses and talking to the owners and their trainers. Elizabeth II’s host was the sportsman and philanthropist Paul Mellon, a friend and fellow thoroughbred breeder, who entertained her at tea that afternoon at his four-thousand-acre estate in nearby Upperville.

  A far more exuberant welcome awaited Elizabeth II and Philip in New York City the next morning. The Queen had asked specifically to see Manhattan “as it should be approached” from the water, a vista she had been dreaming about since childhood. “Wheeeee!” she exclaimed as she caught her first glimpse of the glistening lower Manhattan skyline from the deck of a U.S. Army ferryboat. The sight reminded her, she said, of “a row of great jewels.”

  A crowd of 1.25 million lined the streets from Battery Park to City Hall and northward to the Waldorf-Astoria, waving British and American flags and cheering her motorcade with shouts of “Hi Liz” and “Hooray for Prince Phil,” along with spontaneous bursts of “God Save the Queen.” Driving along Wall Street in Eisenhower’s bubble-top limousine, she and Philip passed through a blizzard of ticker tape, confetti, and torn-up phone books. As she looked up at the canyon of skyscrapers, she exclaimed, “I never realized they were so close together!”

  She had only fifteen hours in the city—“a teaser,” she admitted—to fulfill her wish list and shake some three thousand hands. Wearing a dark blue satin cocktail dress and close-fitting pink velvet hat, she addressed the representatives of eighty-two countries in the United Nations General Assembly. At the conclusion of her six-minute speech praising the organization’s laudable ideals and urging all its member nations to persevere in the pursuit of peace, the audience of two thousand responded with “a thunderous standing ovation.” Afterward, she had an hour-long tour of the five-year-old U.N. headquarters, asking at one point how the thirty-nine-story glass Secretariat building “kept standing up.” During a reception with delegates, Philip talked to Soviet ambassador Andrei Gromyko about the recently launched Sputnik satellite that his wife had mentioned in her letter to Anthony Eden.

  The royal couple used a Louis XV–style suite on the twenty-eighth floor of the Waldorf Towers as their temporary headquarters, and they were feted at two meals in the legendary hotel: a luncheon for 1,700 hosted by Mayor Robert Wagner, and a dinner for 4,500 given by the English-Speaking Union and the Pilgrims of the United States, both groups committed to Anglo-American amity. In between, the Queen took in the “tremendous” view from the 102nd floor of the Empire State Building at twilight—another specific request—when “the evening sky was purple and the offices were still blazing, and the whole midtown skyline is composed of vast hanging sheets of exquisite lace,” in the words of British writer Alistair Cooke.

  As the white-tie banquet began in the grand ballroom, the punishing schedule was beginning to take its toll, even on an energetic thirty-one-year-old Queen. A closed-circuit television set up for the six adjoining banquet rooms gave guests an unusual view of Elizabeth II in her three-inch-high diamond tiara and evening gown glittering with pastel paillettes. She was never supposed to be filmed in the act of eating, but there she was, on the TV screens, fork in left hand, eating striped bass with champagne sauce, filet of beef with truffle sauce, beignet potatoes, string beans almandine, and Waldorf savarin au rhum. Guests could watch her follow strict mealtime protocol, talking for the first two courses to her partner on the left, former U.S. ambassador to Britain Lewis Douglas, then turning to the right at the main course to converse with Pilgrims president Hugh Bullock.

  The New York Times noted that her speech was the “one time during the program … when the fatigue showed through.… She made no effort
to force a smile … and although she stumbled over her text only once, her voice plainly showed it.” Despite her somber demeanor, she warmly praised the dinner’s two sponsors for their emphasis on the “common language and the heritage of history” between Britain and America, as well as their “conscious effort” to ensure that the two nations did not “take each other for granted.”

  She had one more stop that night, a Royal Commonwealth ball for another 4,500 guests at the Seventh Regiment Armory on Park Avenue. Protocol chief Wiley Buchanan marveled that despite her fatigue, she sat on the dais “straight as a ruler, not even touching the back of her chair.” As the Queen and Philip made their way to a waiting limousine well after midnight, she stopped frequently to speak to war veterans. One aviator blinded in World War I tried to get up from his wheelchair to greet her. “She put a gentle hand on his shoulder and told him that he should not rise,” recalled Buchanan. “She spoke to him for several moments, then moved on.”

  Buchanan had arranged for a light to be placed on the floor of the royal couple’s car that was switched on for their drive to Idlewild Airport, illuminating the Queen’s dress and tiara for the throngs of spectators lining the streets of Manhattan and Queens. Many of the women wore bathrobes and had curlers in their hair. “Philip,” said Elizabeth II, “look at all those people in their nightclothes. I certainly wouldn’t come out in my nightclothes to see anyone drive by, no matter who it was!”

  By 2 A.M. the Queen and Philip were on board the Seven Seas, a BOAC DC-7, for their nearly fourteen-hour flight home. “You both have captivated the people of our country by your charm and graciousness,” Eisenhower wrote in his farewell letter to the royal couple.

  American and British papers pronounced the visit “extraordinarily successful” and a “tremendous American triumph.” No one was more pleased than Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, who was due to follow his sovereign to Washington the next week for a round of meetings with Eisenhower. The Queen, Macmillan wrote in his diary, “has buried George III for good and all.” But the British people felt left out as they read about her impromptu forays, not to mention the extensive television coverage she had permitted. “Why did she have to cross the Atlantic to become real?” wondered the London Daily Herald.

  THE QUEEN’S NEW reliance on television was no accident, and her husband had much to do with the change. Given Philip’s fascination with technology, it was only natural that he would see the potential of broadcasting for the monarchy. As early as November 1952 he had predicted that radio and television had “gone beyond the stage of being amusing and entertaining novelties.” He was the first member of the royal family to host his own television program, a documentary about his Commonwealth tour featuring film he had shot.

  From the time of the coronation, Elizabeth II had been wary of the intrusiveness of TV cameras. In her letter to Eden before her North American trip, she confessed her trepidation, saying, “Television is the worst of all, but I suppose when one gets used to it, it is not so terrible as at first sight.” She had decided the previous summer to shift from radio and to televise her annual Christmas broadcast for the first time, on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the inaugural radio broadcast by her grandfather, King George V. Days before her departure to Canada, she had even practiced with a TelePrompTer in a makeshift studio in Buckingham Palace. Philip, who had urged her to use the device, acted as her “producer” as she read an old speech. When she sounded flat, he spent a few moments with her, and on the second run-through she was reported to be “more vivacious,” nodding and smiling at appropriate moments.

  The Canadian broadcast had been the Queen’s dry run for her live telecast at 3 P.M. on December 25, but she was no less apprehensive. It was her sixth Christmas message, which from the beginning had been prepared without benefit of “advice” from the government—the one predictable occasion during the year when she can talk directly to the people. She always takes great trouble over this personal homily, which reaffirms her religious beliefs and sense of duty as she seeks to inspire others to adhere to high standards and do good works. The message typically incorporates ideas from her private secretaries, but it is mainly written in close collaboration with Philip over a period of months, often building on a specific theme that can be linked to events in the preceding year.

  Philip took a particularly active role in the 1957 telecast, bringing in his friend at the BBC, Antony Craxton. They chose the Long Library at Sandringham for its excellent acoustics and set up a small desk in front of a cabinet filled with Christmas cards and family pictures. An arrangement of holly on the desk concealed a microphone, and two cameras were set up, each with a TelePrompTer.

  In addition to getting the knack of reading large type scrolling on a machine, the Queen studied an instructional film made by BBC announcer Sylvia Peters. Even after three rehearsals, Elizabeth II told a guest at the staff holiday party at Windsor Castle, “My husband seems to have found the secret of how to relax on television. I am still worried because I have not found the secret yet.” A few days before the broadcast, Craxton spent forty-five minutes with her, going over the script sentence by sentence.

  The Queen spoke for seven minutes, interrupting her eye contact with the audience by occasionally looking at her sheaf of papers and turning over the pages periodically for effect. She smiled tentatively from time to time, and clasped her hands for emphasis. Television could help her be less of a “remote figure,” she said, and make her annual message to Britain and the Commonwealth “more personal and direct.” Yet she warned of the new medium’s dangers in the “speed at which things are changing all around us,” causing people to “feel lost and unable to decide what to hold on to and what to discard, how to take advantage of the new life without losing the best of the old.”

  The “inventions” themselves weren’t the problem, she added. Rather, “the trouble is caused by unthinking people who carelessly throw away ageless ideals as if they were old and outworn machinery.” To uphold endangered “fundamental principles,” she called for a “special kind of courage … which makes us stand up for everything we know is right, everything that is true and honest. We need the kind of courage that can withstand the subtle corruption of the cynics so that we can show the world that we are not afraid of the future.”

  “I cannot lead you into battle,” Elizabeth II said. “But I can do something else. I can give you my heart, and my devotion to these old islands and to all the peoples of our brotherhood of nations.” As she signed off with her Christmas wishes, she glanced quickly toward her husband standing behind one of the cameras and flashed a luminous smile at her viewers.

  An estimated thirty million people tuned in, and the press, especially in the United States, hailed her performance as an effective reply to her critics, a “post-Altrincham royal speech.” Her manner, said The New York Times, was “unstrained and natural.” “All her charm, grace and simplicity were there,” wrote a London Daily Express commentator. “I was moved … to the point of tears.” Harry Truman called her reference to the “unthinking people” a “lovely statement. We haven’t lost the ideals, but we’ve certainly been neglecting them.”

  No Christmas message in the five decades since has had such an impact, or conveyed such surprisingly dark undertones. “The final draft was, in fact, Prince Philip’s,” Craxton wrote afterward. But it was also a product of ideas exchanged between the Queen and her husband. She has always taken care to avoid saying anything she does not believe, declining even to use the word “very” unless she means “very.” Her pledge of fealty to her people and plea to “stand up for what we believe to be right” were undeniably authentic, as were the deep spiritual threads running through the message.

  A YEAR LATER the government permitted the State Opening of Parliament to be televised for the first time. (It had declined to do so in 1957 when the Queen announced a genuine reform originated by Macmillan and his ministers to create life peers, thereby admitting women to the House of Lords fo
r the first time in their own right.) One of the great British spectacles, the opening of Parliament, is as much a made-for-television phenomenon as any event in the royal calendar. It also serves as a reminder of the Queen’s place as the “Crown in Parliament” by gathering the House of Commons, the House of Lords, and the sovereign in one place, as the Queen reads out the government’s legislative program.

  The ceremony itself draws on centuries of tradition and ageless rituals. The setting is always the House of Lords chamber, with its richly ornamented high ceilings, stained glass windows, and elaborately carved wood.

  The day before the ceremony, the Imperial State Crown and seventeenth-century Sword of State are brought from the Tower of London to Buckingham Palace, where the Queen has a chance to get reaccustomed to having nearly three pounds sitting on her head. In the evening she often works at her desk wearing the purple velvet crown glittering with three thousand diamonds; one year her butler noted that she was wearing pink mule slippers as well.

  On the morning of the opening, a horse-drawn carriage carries the crown and Sword of State, along with the Cap of Maintenance, a crimson velvet hat trimmed with white ermine, down the Mall to the Houses of Parliament. A second coach transports the gold maces. The Queen calls these symbols of royal power “the working pieces of kit,” and she makes certain that the front of the crown, with its huge Black Prince’s Ruby and Cullinan II diamond, faces forward in the carriage. “There is one thing to remember,” she said with a twinkle to Crown Jeweler David Thomas before he made his first trip to the Palace of Westminster with the priceless cargo. “The horses are always in the front of the carriage.”

  Wearing a long white gown, jeweled Garter collar, elbow-length gloves, and diamond tiara, she and Prince Philip, as always in the uniform of Admiral of the Fleet, travel in the horse-drawn Irish State Coach to the Palace of Westminster with her Household Cavalry escort. In the Robing Room, adorned with frescoes depicting the Arthurian legend, she puts on her eighteen-foot-long scarlet velvet robe of state and her crown.